“Allah does not count the days spent out of doors.”  In Walter Pater’s story of “Marius the Epicurean” one reads of a Roman country-seat called “Ad Vigilias Albas,” “White Nights.”  A sense of dreamless sleep distils from the name.  One remembers such nights, and the fresh world of the awakening in the morning.  There are such days.  There are days which ripple past as a night of sleep and leave a worn brain at the end with the same satisfaction of renewal; white days.  Crystal they are, like the water of streams, as musical and eventless; as elusive of description as the ripple over rocks or brown pools foaming.

The days and months and years of a life race with accelerating pace and youth goes and age comes as the days race, but one is not older for the white days.  The clock stops, the blood runs faster, furrows in gray matter smooth out, time forgets to put in tiny crow’s-feet and the extra gray hair a week, or to withdraw by the hundredth of an ounce the oxygen from the veins; one grows no older for the days spent out of doors.  Allah does not count them.

It was days like these which hope held ahead as I paid earnest attention to the good food set before me.  And behold, beside the pleasant vision of hope rose a happy-minded sister called memory.  She took the word “Huron,” this kindly spirit, and played magic with it, and the walls of the Chateau rolled into rustling trees and running water.

I was sitting, in my vision, in flannel shirt and knickerbockers, on a log by a little river, putting together fishing tackle and casting an eye, off and on, where rapids broke cold over rocks and whirled into foam-flecked, shadowy pools.  There should be trout in those shadows.

“Take the butt, Rafael, while I string the line.”

Rafael slipped across—­still in my vision of memory—­and was holding my rod as a rod should be held, not too high or too low, or too far or too near—­right.  He was an old Huron, a chief of Indian Lorette, and woods craft was to him as breathing.

“A varry light rod,” commented Rafael in his low voice which held no tones out of harmony with water in streams or wind in trees.  “A varry light, good rod,” paying meanwhile strict attention to his job.  “M’sieu go haf a luck today.  I t’ink M’sieu go catch a beeg fish on dat river.  Water high enough—­not too high.  And cold.”  He shivered a little.  “Cold last night—­varry cold nights begin now.  Good hun-ting wedder.”

“Have you got a moose ready for me on the little lake, Rafael?  It’s the 1st of September next week and I expect you to give me a shot before the 3d.”

Rafael nodded.  “Oui, m’sieur.  First day.”  The keen-eyed, aquiline old face was as of a prophet.  “We go get moose first day.  I show you.”  With that the laughter-loving Frenchman in him flooded over the Indian hunter; for a second the two inheritances played like colors in shot silk, producing an elusive fabric, Rafael’s charm.  “If nights get so colder, m’sieur go need moose skin kip him warm.”